Apis חף

(3,232 words)

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I. Name

Apis, the sacred bull of Memphis, occurs in the LXX version of Jer. 46.15 as the most prominent of Egypt’s gods whose flight is mocked by the prophet as a signal of the destruction about to befall Egypt by the hand of God. Most commentators and translators reconstruct Apis in the Hebrew text by a redivision and revocalisation of the MT nisḥap ‘is prostrated’ as nās ḥap ‘Apis has fled’. The LXX version would then be the correct rendering of a corrupt MT rather than Jewish polemics (cf. the Ibis in the L…